At Red Stag Media we work with all sizes of company, from start-ups and microbusinesses to PLCs, and they all have their unique requirements and challenges. Often, for smaller business, we constitute their entire PR and marketing department, formulating and delivering their strategy as they usually don’t have the budget to employ any in-house expertise.
For medium-sized and larger companies, however, our role tends to be different. Such companies employ at the very least a marketing manager, who may or may not be supported by junior staff. Often, as the size of the company increase, so does the number of marketing professionals, meaning much of the communication output is already taken care of.
So what advantages are there for medium-sized and large businesses to work with an agency? Well, quite a few, it turns out!
Two heads are better than one
Good ideas rarely come in flashes of inspiration. More often, good ideas are the result of hard graft, searching the corners of your brain for engaging ideas that support your company’s proposition. Adding more brains to the team naturally means you generate more ideas. And with more people to test those ideas and refine them, they end up being much better ideas with increased chances of success.
Many hands make light work
As well as the top-level work, an agency is just as capable with content creation and delivery, working at the coalface of communications to fill any gaps in resource, particularly during busy campaigns.
The right agency will dovetail perfectly with your in-house team and should be flexible enough to switch seamlessly between strategy and delivery, providing support wherever and whenever it is needed.
A fresh perspective
Someone from outside your organisation will bring a fresh perspective to your PR and marketing. They will see your company in a different light to in-house staff who might have been in the business for a number of years. Having worked with many companies across many sectors, agencies can bring that wealth of knowledge and experience to the table and that can be great for informing direction and strategy.
Variety of experience
Although it is likely you’ll have some very experienced members of staff on your marketing team, agencies can bring a host of problem-solving skills to your organisation. As stated, many agencies work with a diverse range of clients from a range of sectors, each with different requirements and different challenges. As a result, agencies will have experienced a host of barriers to successful campaigns. Whatever issues you’re experiencing, it is likely that an agency will have seen them before and will be able to offer workable solutions.
Plugging the skills gap
An agency is often a cost-effective solution to fill skills gaps within your business. PR and marketing is such a broad field these days, it’s unlikely an in-house team will be able to cover everything from copywriting, white-papers, events, media management, social, SEO, photography, video, crisis management, etc. These are all skills a full-service agency can bring.
Whatever the size of your company and communications team, an agency can bring significant value to your marketing activities via creative ideas, a fresh perspective on strategy and direction, content creation and delivery, extra resource and skills.